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WEST AMERICAN SERIES OF" HISTORIES. 

RESOURCES OF MEXICO. 

LITERARY INDUSTRIES. 

THE BOOK OF THE FAIR. 

THE BOOK OF WEALTH. 

THE NEW PACIFIC. 



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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

IAN 28 190f 

A Copyright Entry . 
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COPY'S. ' 



Copyright, 1907, by H. H. Bancroft 




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THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK 



Bomt (Etiwa anh ^an 

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THERE had been some discussion as to 
improving and beautifying the city of 
San Francisco prior to the catastrophe of 
April 18 th. Landscape architects had been 
consulted, proposals considered, and prelim- 
inary plans drawn. Therefore when on that 
day the city was swept by fire, obviously it 
was the opportune moment for the requisite 
changes in the rebuilding. Eor a brief period 
enthusiasm waxed warm. It helped to miti- 
gate the blow, this fencing with fate. Let 
the earth shake, and fires burn, we will have 
here our city, better and more beautiful than 
ever — and more valuable — an imperial city 
of steel it shall be, and thus will we get even 
with the misfortunes of this day. 
1 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

Beform in the rebuilding was needed, 
whatever should he the scale of beauty or 
utility decided upon. Fifty years ago the 
elevating influences of tasteful environment 
were not so highly appreciated as now, and 
all large cities are fifty years old or more. 
All large cities, as a rule, had their begin- 
ning with narrow, crooked streets and mean 
houses. In Europe and Asia there are aggre- 
gations of humanity whose domiciles have 
remained unchanged, one might almost say 
uncleansed, for hundreds or thousands of 
years, or ever since their mythical beginning, 
save only for the covering of the debris of 
dead centuries. 

These ancient towns, mostly offspring of 
feudalism, begun under castle walls and con- 
tinued after walls and castle had crumbled, 
as their area enlarged, with some improve- 
ment, perhaps, in the suburban parts, still 
retained this patch of medievalism, until ob- 
literated by war, or fire, or later by modern 
2 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

progress. Look at Edinburgh, for example. 
With all its Scotch thrift and neatness, there 
yet remains the ill-conditioned and once filthy 
quarter, beside which rise the old-time ten- 
story houses built into the hillside, while in 
the modern part of the city in sharp contrast 
are broad streets and open squares and fine 
buildings. 

In America the birth of towns is quite 
different. Here are no plantings of trem- 
bling poverty under lordly walls, but bold 
pioneering, forecasting agriculture and com- 
merce ; no Babel building, with " Go to, let us 
build here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati," but 
rather, " Here for the present we will abide." 
If, however, serfdom and medievalism were 
absent in ISTew World town-planting, so also 
were sestheticism or any appreciation of the 
beautiful apart from the useful. Old cities 
require reconstruction to make them what 
modern taste and intelligence demand; set- 
tlements in their incipiency are dominated by 
3 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

their sturdy founders, who usually have other 
things to think about than beauty and adorn- 
ment. 

In this day of great wealth and wonderful 
inventions we realize more and more the value 
of the city to mankind, and the quality of the 
city as a means of culture. Cities are not 
merely marts of commerce; they stand for 
civility; they are civilization itself. No un- 
tried naked Adam in Eden might ever pass 
for a civilized man. The city street is the 
school of philosophy, of art, of letters; city 
society is the home of refinement. When the 
rustic visits the city he puts on his best 
clothes and his best manners. In their 
reciprocal relations the city is as men make 
it, while from the citizen one may determine 
the quality of the city. The atmosphere of 
the city is an eternal force. Therefore as we 
value the refinement of the human mind, the 
enlargement of the human heart, we shall 
value the city, and strive so to build, and 
4 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

adorn, and purify, that it may achieve its 
ultimate endeavor. 

' Civic betterment has long been in prog- 
ress among the more civilized communities 
through the influence of cultured people ca- 
pable of appreciating the commercial as well 
as the sesthetical value of art. Vast sums 
have been spent and great results accom- 
plished, but they are nothing as compared 
with the work yet to be done — work which 
will continue through the ages and be fin- 
ished only with the end of time. 

And not only will larger wealth be yet 
more freely poured out on artistic adorn- 
ment, but such use of money will be re- 
garded as the best to which it can be ap- 
plied. For though gold is not beautiful it 
can make beauty, even that beauty which 
elevates and ennobles, which purifies the 
mind and inspires the soul. Progress is 
rapid in this direction as in many others. 
A breach of good taste in public works will 
5 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

ere long be adjudged a crime. For already 
mediaeval mud has ceased to be fashion- 
able, and the picturesque in urban ugliness 
is picturesque no longer. All the capitals of 
Europe have had to be made over, Hauss- 
mannized, once or several times. Our own 
national capital we should scarcely be satis- 
fied with as its illustrious founder left it. 

It is a hopeful sign amidst some discourag- 
ing ones that wealth as a social factor and 
measure of merit is losing something of its 
prestige ; that it is no longer regarded by the 
average citizen as the supreme good, or the 
pursuit of it the supreme aim in life; there 
are so many things worth more than money, 
so many human aspirations and acquire- 
ments worthy of higher considerations than 
the inordinate cravings of graft and greed. 
Hoarded wealth especially is not so worship- 
ful to-day as it was yesterday, while the 
beautiful still grows in grace — the beauti- 
ful and the useful, compelling improvement, 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

always engendered by improved environ- 
ment. 

Some cities are born in tbe purple — rare 
exceptions to tbe rule. San Francisco is 
not one of tbese. St. Petersburg, tbe city 
of palaces, of broad avenues and granite- 
faced quays, wbose greatest afflictions are tbe 
occasional overflow of tbe ]STeva and tbe dyna- 
mite babit, was spoken into being by a mon- 
arch. Necessity stands sponsor for Venice, 
tbe beautiful, with ber streets of water-ways 
and airs of heavenly harmony; while nature 
herself may claim motherhood of Swedish 
Stockholm, brilliant with intermingling 
lakes islands and canals, rocks hills and 
forests, rendering escape from the pictur- 
esque impossible. 

Perm planted his Quakers about 1682, 
long before many of the present large cities 
in America were begun, yet Philadelphia 
was one of the few sketched in such generous 
proportions that little change was afterwards 
7 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

necessary to make it one of the most spacious 
of urban commonwealths. With this exam- 
ple before him came in 1791, more than a 
century later, the father of his country, who 
permitted his surveyors so injudiciously to 
cover the spot on the Potomac which he had 
chosen for the capital city of the republic as 
to require much expensive remodeling later. 
Yet what American can drive about Wash- 
ington now and say it is not worth the cost ? 
Further, as an example, the repeated recon- 
struction and adornment of the national cap- 
ital by Congress are priceless to the whole 
United States, the government therein bear- 
ing witness to the value of the beautiful. 
And if of value on the Potomac, is it not 
equally so at the portal of the Pacific ? 

A few other cities there have been which 
have arisen at the command of man, poten- 
tate or pirate, besides those of the quaker 
Perm and the tzar Peter — Alexandria, the 
old and the new, with Constantinople be- 
8 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

tween; the first by order of the poor world 
conqueror, at the hand of the architect Dinoc- 
rates, two or three centuries before Caesar, 
Cleopatra, and Antony, but made fit for them 
and their chariots by streets a hundred feet 
wide. 

The Danube is the mother of many cities, 
directing the destiny of nations, from the 
Iron Gate to the Golden Horn. Vienna has 
been made brilliantly modern since 1858. 
Beside the sufferings of Constantinople our 
little calamity seems tame. Seven times dur- 
ing the last half century the city has been 
swept by fire, not to mention earthquakes, 
or pestilence, which on one occasion took with 
it three hundred thousand lives. Yet all the 
while it grows in magnificence faster than 
the invisible enemies of Mohammed can de- 
stroy it. But for these purifying fires the 
city would still be one of narrow, filthy streets 
and vile smells, reeking with malaria. The 
Golden Horn of the Bosporus possesses no 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

greater natural advantages than the Golden 
Gate of San Francisco, nor even so great 
The industrial potentialities of the former 
are not to be compared with those of the 
latter, while for healthful airs and charming 
environment we have all that earth can give, 
and therewith should be content. 

Cities have been made as the marquis of 
Bute made Cardiff, bj constructing a dock 
and ship canal, and converting the ancient 
castle into a modern palace. Many towns have 
been started as railway stations, but few of 
them attained importance. Steamboat land- 
ings have been more fortunate. Some cities 
owe their origin to war, some to commerce, and 
not a few to manufactures. Fanaticism has 
played a part, as in India and parts of Africa, 
where are nestings of half-savage humanity 
with a touch of the heavenly in the air., Less 
disciplined are these than zion-towns, but 
nearer the happiness of insensibility — the 
white-marbled and jeweled Taj Mahal, Agra 
10 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortal 
Jehan the builder, with his pearl mosque and 
palace housing the thirty-million-dollar pea- 
cock throne ; Benares, on the Ganges, a series 
of terraces and long stone steps extending 
upward from the holy water, while rising 
yet higher in the background are temples, 
towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental 
splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphithea- 
tre in form, might give San Francisco lessons 
in terrace construction, having hillsides cov- 
ered with them, the scene made yet more 
striking by the dazzling white of the houses. 
After the place became French, the streets 
were widened and arcades established in the 
lower part. 

In fact, the French believe in the utility 
of beauty, and in Paris at least they make it 
pay. The entire expenses of the municipal 
government, including police and public 
works, are met by the spendings of visitors. 
To their dissolute monarchs were due such 
11 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

creations as the Tuileries, the Louvre, and 
Versailles. Have we not dissolute million- 
aires enough to give us at least one fine city ? 

London and Paris stand out in bold con- 
trast, the one for utility, the other for beauty. 
Both are adepts in their respective arts. The 
city proper of London has better buildings 
and cleaner streets than when St. Paul was 
erected; otherwise it is much the same. 
Elsewhere in London, however, are spacious 
parks and imposing palaces, with now and 
then a fine bit of something to look out upon, 
as the bridges of the murky Thames, the 
Parliament houses, the Abbey, Somerset 
house, and Piccadilly, perhaps. Children 
may play at the Zoo, while grown-ups sit in 
hired chairs under the trees. 

Three times London was destroyed by the 
plague, and ixve times by fire, that of 1666 
lasting four days, and covering thrice the 
area of the San Francisco conflagration; yet 
it was rebuilt better than before in three and 
12 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

a half years. Always the city is improved 
in the rebuilding; how much, depends upon 
the intelligence and enterprise of the people. 

Paris is brilliant with everything that 
takes the eye — palaces, arches, Bon Marche 
shops, arcades, colonnades, great open spaces 
adorned with statues, forest parks, elysian 
driveways, and broad boulevards cut through 
mediaeval quarters in every direction, as well 
for air as for protection from the canaille 
blockaded in the narrow streets. San Fran- 
cisco may have some canaille of her own to 
boast of one of these days; canaille engen- 
dered from the scum of Europe and Asia, 
and educated at our expense for our destruc- 
tion. Over and over, these two cities, each 
a world metropolis, have been renovated and 
reconstructed, the work in fact going on con- 
tinously. 

For some of the most effective of our ur- 
ban elaborations we must go back to the first 
of city builders of whom we have knowl- 
13 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

edge. The Assyrians made terraces, nature 
teaching them. On the level plain building 
ground was raised forty feet for effect. Like 
all artists of precivilization, the Assyrians 
placed adornment before convenience, as ap- 
peared in Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon 
on the Euphrates. At Thebes and Palmyra 
it was the same, their palaces of alabaster, 
if one chooses to believe what is said, cover- 
ing, some of them, a hundred acres. The 
fashion now is to build upward rather than 
outward. Besides this alabaster acreage 
there are to be taken into account the pyra- 
mids, artificial mountains, and endless tower- 
towns, supposed to be an improvement on 
whatever existed before their time. Around 
the Mediterranean and over India way were 
once hundreds of charming places like the 
Megara suburb of Carthage and the amphi- 
theatre of Rhodes, prolific in classic art and 
architecture, precious gifts of the gods. 
But before all other gods or gifts comes 
14 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

Athens, where the men were as gods and the 
gods very like the men. Encircling the 
Acropolis hill — most ancient cities had their 
central hill — the city owes its grandeur to 
the many temples dedicated to the Olympian 
deities by the men who made them, made 
both deities and temples, that long line of 
philosophers the sublimity of whose thoughts 
civilization fed on and found expression in 
the genius of now and then a Pericles or a 
Phidias. 

Twenty times Pome suffered, each time 
worse than ever befell an American city, the 
debris of destruction overspreading her sacred 
soil some fathoms deep, yet all the while 
mistress of the world. 

The Moors in Spain reconstructed and em- 
bellished many cities, and built many entire. 
To them Spain owes her finest specimens of 
art and architecture, as Seville, Cordova, and 
the Alhambra. In Naples the mediaeval still 
overshadows the modern. The city needs 
15 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

cleansing, though she flourishes in her filth 
and volcanic belchings. Mce, like Paris, 
plans to please her guests. Berlin was a little 
late with her reconstructive work; the town 
walls were not removed till 1866. Though 
dating from 1190, Glasgow is practically 
modern, having been several times renovated 
by fire. Antwerp, burned in 1871, was 
quickly rebuilt. The Hague is charming as 
the city of peace. Munich, on the Isar, is 
every day drifting into the beautiful, not to 
say sesthetical. 

Pekin is a city sui generis, with its Kin- 
Ching, or prohibited city, sacred to royalty; 
its Hwang-Ching, or imperial city, exclu- 
sively for court officials; its Tartar divis- 
ion and Chinese division, all completed ac- 
cording to the grand khan and Confucius. 
Happy Celestials ! There is nothing more to 
be done, nothing to reconstruct, nothing to 
improve; it stands alone, the only city in all 
the world that is absolutely finished and per- 
16 



i ^ 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

feet. But of a truth our public works sink 
into insignificance beside those of the ancient 
barbarians, the great wall and canal of China, 
the pyramids of Egypt, and the brilliant cities 
of Assyria and Palmyra. 

The cities of Australia — Melbourne, Syd- 
ney, Adelaide — in common with all those 
of the British colonies, are laid out along 
liberal lines, with broad streets, parks, pub- 
lic squares, and beautiful modern buildings, 
requiring little change for many years to 
come. The English part of Calcutta is a city 
of palaces, built from the spoils of subjuga- 
tion. Yokohama was a small fishing station 
when Commodore Perry called there in 1854. 

In the Xew World as in the Old, from 
John Cotton to Joseph Smith, religion with 
cupidity inspires. One William Blaxton in 
1630 lived where Boston now is, and invited 
thither Winthrop and his colonists. When 
banished from Massachusetts, Boger Will- 
iams stepped ashore on the bank of the 
17 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

Seekonk, on a rock where is now Providence. 
The French built a fort where Marquette 
camped in 1673, and there is now Chicago. 
Buffalo was a military post in 1812. St. 
Paul was an Indian trading station prior to 
1838. The building of Fort Washington was 
followed by settlers and Cincinnati was 
begun. Henry Hudson touched at Manhat- 
tan island in 1609, and the Dutch follow- 
ing, New York was the result. Brigham 
Young, journeying westward, came to the 
Great Salt Lake, where, as he told his fol- 
lowers, he was instructed by divine revela- 
tion to plant the City of the Saints. It proved 
more permanent than might have been ex- 
pected, as zion-cities usually are quite ephem- 
eral affairs. 

Boston, the beneficial, swept by fires, 
smallpox, witchcraft, quakerism, snowstorms, 
earthquakes, and proslavery riots, still lives 
to meditate upon her own superiority and 
to instruct mankind. Much attention has 
18 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

been given of late in Boston and suburban 
towns to artistic effect in street architec- 
ture. Until recently New York has given 
but little thought to pleasing effects. Broad- 
way was not broad, and Fifth Avenue was 
not striking. Of late, however, the city 
has become imperial, houses parks and 
driveways being among the finest in the 
world. New Orleans has survived at least 
a dozen great yellow-fever crises since 1812, 
population meanwhile increasing twenty- 
fold. After the enforced construction of the 
levee, the idea came to some one that the top 
of it would make a fine driveway, which in 
due time was extended from the river and 
bayous to the lake, thus becoming the most 
attractive feature of the place. Though not 
without natural attractions, Chicago was not 
made by or for her things of beauty. Be- 
ginning with low wooden houses along dirty 
streets, transformations were continued until 
systems of parks and boulevards with elegant 
19 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

edifices came into view, — which shows that, 
however material the beginning of American 
towns may be, if prosperity comes the ses- 
thetical is sure to come with it. A contrast 
to Chicago may be found in St. Louis, for a 
long time trading-post town and city, which 
would be of more importance now were her 
people of a different quality. Even her 
chronic calamities, tornadoes, floods, and epi- 
demics, fail to rouse her energies, so that 
Chicago, starting later and under more ad- 
verse circumstances, outstripped her in every 
particular. Cleveland was laid out for a fine 
city, so that as she grew little alteration was 
found necessary. The streets are wide, 80 
to 120 feet — Superior Street 132 feet — and 
so abundant is the foliage, largely maple, 
that it is called the Forest city. 

As an instance of modern aesthetic town 
construction one might cite Denver, a west- 
ern Yankee metropolis of ultrarefined men 
and women from down Boston way, breath- 
20 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

ing a nomenclature never so freely used be- 
fore among mid-continent mountains, streets, 
schoolhouses, parks, and gardens — all alive 
with the names of New England poets, phi- 
losophers, and statesmen. Scarcely yet 
turned the half century in age, few such 
charming cities as Denver have been made 
with fewer mistakes. 

San Francisco at her birth and christen- 
ing had for godfather neither prince nor 
priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy 
peninsula, on whose inner edge, at the cove 
called Yerba Buena, stood some hide and tal- 
low stores and fur depots which drew to them 
the stragglers that passed that way, was about 
as ill-omened a spot as the one designated 
by the snake-devouring eagle perched upon 
an island cactus as the place where the wan- 
dering Aztecs should rest and build their city 
of Mexico. San Francisco's godparents were 
but common humanity, traders and adven- 
turers, later gold-seekers and pot politicians, 
21 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

intelligent, bold, and for the most part hon- 
est ; few intending long to remain, few dream- 
ing of the great city to arise here; few car- 
ing how the town should be made, if one 
were made at all. When was improvised an 
alcalde after the Mexican fashion, and two 
boards of aldermen were established after 
the New York fashion, and the high officials 
saw that they could now and then pick up a 
twenty-five-dollar fee for deeding a fifty vara 
lot, if so be they had on hand some fifty varas, 
they forthwith went to work to make them 
by drawing lines in front of the cove and 
intersecting them at right angles by lines 
running up over the hills, giving their own 
names, with a sprinkling of the names of 
bear-flag heroes, not forgetting the usual 
Washington and Jackson, leaving in the 
centre a plaza, the cove in front to be filled 
in later. The streets were narrow, dusty in 
summer and miry in winter. Spanish- Amer- 
ican streets are usually thirty-six feet wide. 
22 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

Winding trails led from the Presidio to the 
Mission, and from Mission and Presidio to 
the cove. This was the beginning of San 
Francisco, which a merciful providence has 
five times burned, the original shacks and 
their successors, the last time thoroughly, 
giving the inhabitants the opportunity to 
build something better. 

All this time the matchless bay and invit- 
ing shores awaited the coming of those who 
should aid in the accomplishment of their 
high destiny. Situated on the Pacific rela- 
tively as is New York on the Atlantic, the 
natural gateway with its unique portal be- 
tween the old East and the new West, the 
only outlet for the drainage of thousands of 
square miles of garden lands and grain 
fields, a harbor in the world's center of high- 
est development, with no other to speak of 
within iive hundred miles on either side; 
dominator of the greatest of oceans, waters 
more spacious than those of Rio, airs of pur- 
23 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

pie haze sweeter than those of Italy, hills 
islands and shore lines more sublime than 
any of Greece — all this time these benefac- 
tions of nature have awaited the apprecia- 
tion and action of those who for their own 
benefit and the benefit of the nation would 
utilize them. Are they here now, these new 
city-builders, or must San Francisco wait 
for another generation? 

They must be men of broad minds, for this 
is no ordinary problem to be worked out. It 
is certain that in the near or distant future 
there will be here a very large and very 
wealthy city, probably the largest and wealth- 
iest in the world. The whole of the penin- 
sula will be covered, and as much more space 
beyond it, and around the bay shores to and 
beyond Carquinez strait. Viewed in the 
light of history and progressional phenom- 
ena, this is the only rational conclusion. 

Always the march of intellectual develop- 
ment has been from east to west, the old East 
24 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

dying as the new West bursts into being, 
until now west is east, and the final issue 
must here be met. In the advent and progress 
of civilization there was first the Mediter- 
ranean, then the Atlantic, and then the Pa- 
cific, the last the greatest of all. What else 
is possible ? Where else on this planet is man 
to go for his ultimate achievement ? 

Conviction comes slowly in such cases, and 
properly so. Yet in forecasting the future 
from the light of the past cavilers can 
scarcely go farther afield than our worshipful 
forbears, who less than a century ago, on the 
floor of the United States congress, decried 
as absurd settlement beyond the Missouri, 
ridiculed buying half a continent of worth- 
less Northwest wilderness, thanked God for 
the Rocky mountain barrier to man's pre- 
sumption, scouted at a possible wagon road, 
not to say railway, across the continent, 
lamented the unprofitable theft of Califor- 
nia, and cursed the Alaska purchase as 
25 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

money worse than thrown away. In view of 
what has been and is, can anyone call it a 
Utopian dream to picture the Pacific bor- 
dered by an advanced civilization with cities 
more brilliant than any of the ancient East, 
more opulent than any of the cultured West ? 
Bio de Janeiro! what have the Brazilians 
been doing these last decades? Decapitat- 
ing politically dear Dom Pedro, true patriot, 
though emperor — he came to me once in my 
library, pouring out his soul for his beloved 
Brazil — they abolished slavery, formed a re- 
public, and modernized the city. They made 
boulevards and water drives, the finest in the 
world. They cut through the heart of the 
old town a new Avenida Central, over a mile 
in length and one hundred and ten feet wide, 
lining it on either side with palatial business 
houses and costly residences, paving the 
thoroughfare with asphalt and adorning it 
with artistic fixtures for illumination, the 
street work being completed in eighteen 
26 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

months. Strangling in their incipiency graft 
and greed, after kindly dismissing Dom 
Pedro with well-filled pockets for home, these 
Portuguese brought out their money and 
spent hundreds of millions in improving their 
city, with hundreds of millions left which 
they have yet to spend. Thus did these of 
the Latin race, whom we regard as less Bos- 
tonian than ourselves. 

With this brief glance at other cities of 
present and other times, and having in view 
the part played by environment in the trend 
of refining influences, and remembering fur- 
ther, following the spirit of the times, that 
nothing within the scope of human power to 
accomplish is too vast, or too valuable, or too 
advanced for the purpose, it remains with 
the people of San Francisco to determine 
what they will do. 

It is not necessary to speak of the city's 
present or future requirements, as sea water 
on the hills, and fresh water with electric 
27 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

power from the Sierra; sea wall, docks, and 
water-way drives; widened streets and wind- 
ing boulevards; embellished hillsides and 
hilltops ; bay tunnels and union railway sta- 
tion; bay and ocean boating and bathing; 
arches and arcades ; park strips or boulevards 
cutting through slums, and the nests of filthy 
foreigners, bordered on either side by struc- 
tures characteristic of their country — all 
this and more will come to those who shall 
have the matter in charge. The pressing 
need now is a general plan for all to work 
to ; this, and taking the reconstruction of the 
city out of politics and placing it in the hands 
of responsible business men. 

If the people and government of the 
United States will consider for a moment 
the importance to the nation of a well-forti- 
fied and imposing city and seaport at San 
Francisco bay; the importance to the army 
and navy, to art and science, to commerce and 
manufactures ; of the effect of a city with its 
28 



SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO 

broad surroundings, at once elegant and im- 
pressive, upon the nations round the Pacific 
and on all the world, there should be little 
trouble in its accomplishment. 

And be it remembered that whatever San 
Francisco, her citizens and her lovers, do 
now or neglect to do in this present regen- 
eration will be felt for good or ill to re- 
motest ages. Let us build and rebuild ac- 
cordingly, bearing in mind that the new San 
Francisco is to stand forever before the 
world as the measure of the civic taste and 
intelligence of her people. 



29 



ftesutgam 



Hesurgam 

THE question has been oftener asked 
than answered, why Chicago should 
have grown in wealth and population so 
much faster than St. Louis, or New Orleans, 
or San Francisco. It is not enough to point 
to her position on the lakes, the wide extent 
of contributory industries, and the con- 
vergence of railways; other cities have at 
their command as great natural advantages 
with like limitless opportunity. As to loca- 
tion, city sites are seldom chosen by conven- 
tion, or the fittest spots favored. Chicagoans 
assert that a worse place than theirs for a city 
cannot be found on the shores of Lake Michi- 
gan. New York would be better up the 
Hudson, London in Bristol channel, and San 
Francisco at Carquinez strait. Indeed, it 
was by a Yankee trick that the sand-blown 
33 



RESURGAM 

peninsula secured the principal city of the 
Pacific. 

It happened in this way. General Vallejo, 
Mexican comandante residing at Sonoma, 
upon the arrival of the new American author- 
ities said to them : " Let it bear the name of 
my wife, Francesca, and let it be the com- 
mercial and political metropolis of your Pa- 
cific possessions, and I will give you the finest 
site in the world for a city, with state-house 
and residences built and ready for your free 
occupation." And so it was agreed, and the 
general made ready for the coming of the 
legislature. 

Meanwhile, to the American alcalde, who 
had established his rule at Yerba Buena, a 
trading hamlet in the cove opposite the island 
of that name and nucleus of the present San 
Francisco, came Folsom, United States army 
captain and quartermaster, to whom had been 
given certain lots of land in Yerba Buena, 
and said : " Why not call the town San Fran- 
34 



RESURGAM 

cisco, and bring hither ships which clear from 
various ports for San Francisco bay \ " And 
so it was done ; the fine plans of the Mexican 
general fell to the ground, and the name Be- 
nicia was given to what had been Francesca. 
A year or two later, with five hundred ships 
of the gold-seekers anchored off the cove, not 
all the men and money in the country could 
have moved the town from its ill-chosen loca- 
tion. 

Opportunity is much the same in various 
times and places, whether fortuitous or 
forced. More men make opportunity than 
are made by it, particularly among those who 
achieve great success. Land being unavail- 
able, Venice the beautiful was built upon 
the water, while the Hollanders manage to 
live along the centuries below sea level. 

The builders of Chicago possessed varied 

abilities of a high order, not least among 

which was the faculty of working together. 

They realized at an early date that the citi- 

35 



RESURGAM 

zens and the city are one ; whatever of advan- 
tage they might secure to their city would 
be returned to them by their city fourfold. 

" Oh, I do love this old town ! " one of 
them was heard to exclaim as, returning 
from the station, his cab paddled through the 
slushy streets under a slushy sky. He was 
quite a young man, yet he had made a large 
fortune there. " It's no credit to us making 
money here," he added, " we couldn't help 
it." So citizenized, what should we expect 
if not unity of effort, a willingness to efface 
self when necessary, and with intense indi- 
vidualism to subordinate individual ideas 
and feelings to the public good ? In such an 
atmosphere rises quickly a new city from 
the ashes of the old, or a fairy creation like 
the Columbian Exposition. Imagine the 
peninsula of San Francisco covered by a real 
city equal in beauty and grandeur to the 
Chicago sham city of 1893. 

The typical West-American city builder 
36 



RESURGAM 

has money — created, not inherited, wealth. 
But possession merely is not enough ; he gives. 
Yet possessing and giving are not enough; 
he works, constantly and intelligently. The 
power which wealth gives is often employed 
in retarding progress when the interests of 
the individual seem to clash with those of 
the commonwealth; it is always lessened by 
the absence of respect for its possessor. But 
when wealth, intelligence, honesty, and en- 
thusiasm join hands with patriotism there 
must be progress. 

Time and place do not account for all of 
Chicago's phenomenal growth, nor do the dis- 
tance from the world's centres of population 
and industry, the comparative isolation, and 
the evil effects of railway domination ac- 
count wholly for San Francisco's slow growth 
toward the end of the century. For, follow- 
ing the several spasms of development inci- 
dent to the ages of gold, of grain, and of 
fruit, and the advent of the railway incubus, 
37 



RESURGAM 

California for a time betook herself to rest, 
which indeed was largely paralysis. Then, 
too, those who had come first and cleared the 
ground, laying the foundations of fortunes, 
were passing away, and their successors 
seemed more ready to enjoy than to create. 
But with the opening of a new century all 
California awoke and made such progress 
as was never made before. 

Coming to the late catastrophe, it was well 
that too much dependence was not placed on 
promises regarding rehabilitation made dur- 
ing the first flush of sympathy; the words 
were nevertheless pleasant to the ear at the 
time. The insurance companies would act 
promptly and liberally, taking no advantage 
of any technicality; congress would remit 
duties on building material for a time, and 
thus protect the city-builders from the ex- 
tortions of the material men; the material 
men roundly asserted that there should be no 
extortion, no advance in prices, but, on the 
38 



RESURGAM 

contrary, all other work should be set aside 
and precedence given to San Francisco or- 
ders; eastern capitalists were to cooperate 
with the government in placing at the portal 
of the Pacific a city which should be a credit 
to the nation and a power in the exploitation 
of the great ocean. 

None of these things came to pass. In- 
deed it was too much to expect of poor human 
nature until selfishness and greed are yet fur- 
ther eliminated. Never to be forgotten was 
the superb benevolence which so promptly 
and so liberally showered comforts upon the 
poor, the sick, the hungry, and the houseless 
until it was feared that the people might 
become pauperized. But that was charity, 
whereas " business is business." 

The insurance companies, themselves 
stricken nigh unto death, paused in the gen- 
erous impulse to pay quickly and in full and 
let the new steel city arise at once in all its 
glory. They began to consider, then to tem- 
39 



RESURGAM 

porize, and finally, with notable exceptions, 
to evade by every means in their power the 
payment of their obligations. The loss and 
the annoyance thus inflicted upon the in- 
sured were increased by the uncertainty as to 
what they should finally be able to do. Con- 
gress likewise paused to consider the effect 
the proposed remission of duties would have 
on certain members and their lumber and 
steel friends. Thus a hundred days passed 
by, and with some relief half a hundred more. 
Outside capital was still ready, but San 
Franciscans seemed to have sufficient for 
present needs. Capital is conservative and 
Californians independent. Even from the 
government they never asked much, though 
well aware that since the gold discovery Cali- 
fornia has given a hundredfold more than 
she has received. Her people were accus- 
tomed to take care of themselves, and man- 
aged on the whole to get along. A general 
conflagration was not a new thing. Four 
40 



RESURGAM 

times during gold-digging days San Fran- 
cisco was destroyed by fire, and each time 
new houses were going up before the ashes 
were cold. True, there was not so much to 
burn in those days, but it was all the people 
had; there was not so much to rebuild, and 
there were no insurance companies to keep 
them back. San Francisco would be grate- 
ful, and it would be a graceful thing for the 
government to do, to keep away the sharks 
until the people should get their heads above 
water again, not as charity, but for the gen- 
eral good. The exaction of duties on lumber 
from British Columbia was simply taking 
money from the San Francisco builders and 
thrusting it into the plethoric pockets of the 
Puget Sound people, who at once advanced 
their prices so as seriously to retard build- 
ing and render it in many cases impossible. 
Even as I write word comes of another ad- 
vance in the price of lumber, owing to the 
apathy at Washington and elsewhere, after 
41 



RESURGAM 

twice before raising the price to the highest 
limit. 

Meanwhile, in and around the burned dis- 
trict, traffic never ceased. The inflow of 
merchandise from all parts continued. Upon 
the ashes of their former stores, and scat- 
tered about the suburbs, business men estab- 
lished themselves wherever they could find a 
house to rent or a lot to build upon. Shacks 
were set up in every quarter, and better 
structures of one or two stories were per- 
mitted, subject to removal by order of the 
city at any time they should appear to 
stand in the way of permanent improvement. 
Some business houses were extinguished, but 
other and larger ones arose in their stead. 
Rebuilding was slow because of the debris to 
be removed and the more substantial char- 
acter of the permanent structures to be 
erected. 

Around the bay continues the hum of in- 
dustry. The country teems with prosperity. 
42 



RESURGAM 

Xever were the services of the city needed 
so much as now. There are no financial dis- 
turbances; money is easy, but more will be 
required soon; claims are not pressed in the 
courts. Any San Francisco bonds thrown 
upon the market are quickly taken by local 
capitalists. Customs receipts are larger than 
ever before, and there is no shrinkage at the 
clearing house. Land values remain much 
the same; in some quarters land has depre- 
ciated, in other places it has increased in 
price; buyers stand ready to take advantage 
of forced sales. 

Labor is scarce in both city and country; 
wages are high and advancing. Five times 
the present number of mechanics can find 
profitable employment in the city, and it will 
be so for years to come, as there is much to 
be done. 

With the advance of the labor wage and 
of lumber, rents are advanced. Mills and 
factories are running at their full capacity. 
43 



RESURGAM 

Orchards and grain fields are overflowing, 
and harvesters are found with difficulty. 
Merchants' sales were never so large nor 
profits so good. Prices of everything rule 
high, with an upward tendency, the demand 
at the shops being for articles of good qual- 
ity. Oriental rugs and diamonds are con- 
spicuously in evidence. Insurers are paying 
their losses to some extent, and many people 
find themselves in possession of more ready 
money than they ever had before. They are 
rich, though they may have no house to sleep 
in. It is a momentary return to the flush 
times of the early fifties, though upon a 
broader and more civilized scale, and with- 
out their uncertainty or their romance. 

In view of the facts it seems superfluous 
to discuss questions regarding the future of 
San Francisco. That is to say, such ques- 
tions as are propounded by chronic croakers : 
Will the city be rebuilt ? If so, will it be a 
city of fine buildings ? Will not the fear of 
44 



RESURGAM 

earthquakes drive away capital and confine 
reconstruction to insignificance? 

Let ns hasten to assure our friends that 
the day of doom has not yet come to this 
city; that the day of doom never comes to 
any city for so slight a cause, or for any 
cause short of a rain of brimstone and fire, 
as in the case of Sodom. Whether of im- 
perial steel or of imperial shacks; whether 
calamities come in the form of such tem- 
blores as are here met occasionally in a mild 
form, or in the far more destructive form of 
hurricanes, floods, pestilence, sun-striking, 
and lightning, so common at the east and 
elsewhere, and from which San Francisco is 
wholly free, there will here forever be a city, 
a large, powerful, and wealthy city. 

Every part of the earth is subject at any 
time to seismic disturbance, and no one can 
truthfully say that California is more liable 
to another such occurrence than any other 
part of the United States. Indeed, it should 
45 



RESURGAM 

be less so, the earth's crust here having set- 
tled itself, let us hope, to some centuries of 
repose. Never before has anything like this 
been known on our Pacific seaboard. Never 
before, so far as history or tradition or the 
physical features of the country can show, 
has California experienced a serious earth- 
quake shock — that is to say, one attended 
by any considerable loss of life or property. 
Nor was the earthquake of April last so ter- 
rible as it may seem to some. Apart from 
the fire there was not so very much of it, and 
no great damage was done. The official fig- 
ures are: 266 killed by falling walls, 177 by 
fire, 7 shot, and 2 deaths by ptomaine poi- 
soning — 452 in all. The property damage 
by the earthquake is scarcely worth speaking 
of, being no more than happens elsewhere in 
the world from other causes nearly every 
day; it would have been quickly made good 
and little thought of it but for the conflagra- 
tion that followed. 

46 



RESURGAM 

Compare San Francisco casualties with 
those of other cities. Two hundred and 
sixty-six deaths as the result of the greatest 
calamity that ever happened in California! 
Not to mention the floods, fires, and cyclones 
common to St. Louis, Chicago, Galveston, 
and all mid-continent America, the yellow 
fever at New Orleans and along the south- 
ern shore, or the 25,000 deaths from cholera 
in New York and Philadelphia in less than 
twenty-five years, or the loss of 1,000 ships 
on the Atlantic coast in the hurricane of 
August, 1873 — not to mention the many ex- 
traordinary displays of vindictive nature, 
take some of the more commonplace calami- 
ties incident to most cities except those along 
the Pacific coast. 

Every year more people and more prop- 
erty are destroyed hy lightning, floods, and 
wind-storms on the Atlantic side of the 
Rocky mountains than are affected by earth- 
quakes on the Pacific side in a hundred 
47 



EESURGAM 

years. Every year more people drop dead 
from sunstrokes in New York, Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, and other eastern cities than 
are killed by earthquakes in San Francisco 
in a thousand years, so far as we may know. 
Yet men and women continue to live and 
build houses in those cities without thought 
of running away. , 

Nor can California claim the whole even 
of United States earthquakes. In 1755 all 
New England was shaken up, and Boston 
housetops and walls were set dancing, the 
horror coming in " with a roaring noise, like 
that of thunder," as the record has it, " and 
then a swell like the roaring sea " ; and yet, 
and notwithstanding the great fire later, the 
city still shows vitality, the people are not 
afraid, and property is valuable. And so in 
regard to New York and London and all 
cities. In Missouri, in 1811, the earth shook 
almost continuously for several months along 
a stretch of three hundred miles, throwing 
48 



RESURGAM 

up prairies into sand hills and submerging 
forests. Chicago and New York, and all 
the country between, were visited by earth- 
quakes in 1870. Then there are Virginia 
and the Carolinas, Alabama Texas and Col- 
orado — there is not a state in the union 
that has not had a touch of well-authen- 
ticated earthquakings at some time in its 
history. 

To one who knows the people and the 
country, the people with their magnificent 
energy and ability, their indomitable will 
and their splendid courage ; the country with 
its boundless natural wealth and illimitable 
potentialities; the city, key to the Golden 
Gate, which opens the East to the West and 
West to East; the bay, mistress primeval, 
through which flows the drainage of six hun- 
dred miles in length of interior valley, the 
garden of the world; to one who has here 
lived and loved, assisting in this grand 
upbuilding, thoughts of relinquishment, of 
49 



RESURGAM 

lesser possibilities, of meaner efforts, do not 
come. 

What would you? If there is a spot on 
earth where life and property are safer, 
where men are more enterprising and women 
more intelligent and refined, where business 
is better or fortunes more safely or surely 
made, the world should know of it. The 
earth may tremble now and then, but houses 
may be built which cannot be destroyed; 
fires are liable to occur wherever material 
exists that will burn, but fires may be con- 
trolled. 

As for the city, its life and destiny, there 
is this to be said. The few square miles of 
buildings burned were not San Francisco, 
they were only buildings. Were every house 
destroyed and every street obliterated, there 
would still remain the city, with its com- 
merce, its manufactures, its civilization, a 
spiritual city if you like, yet with material 
values incapable of destruction — an atmos- 
50 



RE SURG AM 

phere alive with cheerful industry ; also land 
values, commercial relations, financial con- 
nections, skilled laborers and professional 
men, and a hundred other like souls of 
things. In a thousand ideas and industries, 
though the ground is but ashes, the spirit of 
progress still hovers over the hills awaiting 
incarnation. Dependent on this pile of ashes, 
or the ghosts thereof, are fleets of vessels sail- 
ing every sea; farms and factories along 
shore and back to and beyond the Sierra; 
merchants and mechanics here and elsewhere ; 
mines and reclamation systems, and financial 
relations the world over. 

The question now is not as to the existence 
or permanency of a central city on the shores 
of San Francisco bay. That fact was estab- 
lished beyond peradventure with the build- 
ing of the bay, and nothing short of univer- 
sal cataclysm can affect it. It is rather to 
the quality of that city that the consideration 
of the present generation should be directed. 
51 



RESURGAM 

The shell has been injured, but the soul of 
the city is immortal; and in the restoration 
it would be strange if our twentieth-century 
young men cannot do better in artistic city 
building than the sturdy gold-seekers and 
their successors of half a century ago. 

If history and human experiences teach 
anything; if from the past we may judge 
somewhat of the future, we might, if we 
chose, glance back at the history of cities, 
and note how, when the Mediterranean was 
the greatest of seas, Carthage and Venice 
were the greatest of cities; how, when the 
Atlantic assumed sway, Ghent, Seville, and 
London each in turn came to the front; or 
how, following the inevitable, as civilization 
takes possession of the Pacific, the last, the 
largest in its native wealth as well as in its 
potentialities the richest of all, it is not dif- 
ficult to see that the chief city, the mistress 
of this great ocean, must be mistress of the 
world. 

52 



RESURGAM 

But this is not all. A great city on this 
great bay, beside this greatest of oceans, cen- 
trally situated, through whose Golden Gate 
pass the waters drained from broad fertile 
valleys, a harbor without an equal, with 
some hundreds of miles of water front ready 
for a thousand industries, where ocean ves- 
sels may moor beside factories and ware- 
houses, with a climate temperate, equable, 
healthful, and brewed for industry; a city 
here, ugly or beautiful, fostered or oppressed, 
given over to the sharks of speculation or 
safeguarded as one of the brightest jewels of 
the nation, is an inexorable necessity ; its des- 
tiny is assured; and all the powers of graft 
and greed cannot prevail against it. It is a 
military necessity, for here will be stationed 
the chief defenses and defenders of the na- 
tion's western border. It is an industrial 
necessity, for to this city three continents 
and a thousand islands will look for service. 
As the Spanish war first revealed to America 
53 



RESURGAM 

her greatness, so the possible loss of San 
Francisco quickly demonstrates the necessity 
of her existence to the nation. It is an edu- 
cational necessity, whence the dusky peoples 
around the Pacific may draw from the higher 
civilization to the regeneration of the world. 
In the University of California, standing 
opposite the Golden Gate, with its able and 
devoted president and professors, this work 
is already well established, the results from 
which will prove too vast and far-reaching 
for our minds at present to fathom. 

And in all the other many byways of prog- 
ress the results of the last half-century of 
effort on our sand-dune peninsula are not 
lost. Earthquakes cannot destroy them; fire 
cannot burn them. San Francisco grew from 
the Yerba Buena hamlet in sixty years. In 
a new and untried field city-building then 
was something of an experiment; yet popu- 
lation grew to half a million, and wealth in 
proportion; and never was improvement so 
54 



RESURGAM 

marked as just before the fire. With wealth 
and population but little impaired, and with 
the ground cleared for new constructive work, 
there would be nothing strange in a city here 
of three or four millions of people in another 
sixty years. Actual progress has scarcely 
been arrested. We are rudely hustled and 
awake to higher and severer effort. No house 
or store or factory or business will be rebuilt 
or established except in a larger and more 
efficient way, and that is progress. 

In and around the city are already more 
people than were here before the fire, and 
soon there will be twice as many, for from 
every quarter are coming mechanics and busi- 
ness men, attracted by high wages and the 
material requirements of the city. Hun- 
dreds of millions of money from the insur- 
ance companies and from local and outside 
capitalists are finding safe and profitable in- 
vestment. And this is only the beginning. 

San Francisco is already a large manu- 
55 



RESURGAM 

f acturing city ; it will be many times larger. 
Around its several hundred miles of bay 
shore and up the Carquinez strait will be 
thousands of industries to-day not dreamed 
of, and all ministering to the necessities of 
the thousand cities of the Pacific. There is 
no place in the world better adapted for 
manufacturing. All sorts of raw material 
can be gathered here from every quarter of 
the earth at small cost, lumber, coal, iron, 
wool, and cotton for a hundred factories, and 
mineral ores for reduction. Likewise labor 
at a minimum wage, congress and the lords 
of labor permitting. Add to these advan- 
tages a climate cool in summer and warm in 
winter, where work can be comfortably car- 
ried on every day in the year, and a more 
desirable spot cannot be found. 

Industrially San Francisco should domi- 
nate the Pacific, its firm land and islands, 
upon whose borders is to be found more natu- 
ral wealth, mineral and agricultural, than 
56 



RESURGAM 

upon those of all the other waters of the 
earth combined, and the exploitation of which 
has scarcely begun. Here in abundance are 
every mineral and metal, rich and varied 
soils, all fruits and native products, fuels 
and forests, for some of which we may 
even thank earthquakes and kindred volcanic 
forces. Manufactures compel commerce, and 
the commerce of the Pacific will rule the 
world. The essentials of commerce are here. 
Intelligence and enterprise are here and open 
to enlargement. 

For the late severe loss the city may find 
some compensations — as the cleansing effect 
of fire; much filth, material and moral, has 
been destroyed. Yet one is forced to observe 
that the precincts of Satan retain their land 
values equal to any other locality. The 
greatest blessing of the destruction, however, 
is in the saving from a life of luxury and 
idleness our best young men and women, 
who will in consequence enter spheres of 
57 



RESURGAM 

usefulness, elevating and ennobling, thus ex- 
ercising a beneficial influence on future gen- 
erations. Already work has become the fash- 
ion; snobbism is in disgrace; and some ele- 
ments or influences of the simple life thus 
reestablished will remain. 

When all has been said that may be re- 
garding the present and the future, regard- 
ing purposes and potentialities, the simple 
fact remains that the city of San Francisco 
will be what people make of it, neither more 
nor less. The fruitful interior and the pine- 
clad Sierra; the great ocean, its islands and 
opulent shores, with their fifty thousand 
miles of littoral frontage, and every nation 
thereon awaiting a higher culture than any 
which has yet appeared; the Panama canal, 
the world's highway, linking east and west, 
all these will be everything or nothing to 
those who sit at the Golden Gate, according 
as they themselves shall determine. For the 
glory of a city is not altogether in its marble 
58 



RESURGAM 

palaces and structures of steel, though these 
have their value, but in its citizens, its men 
and women, its men of ability, of unity, of 
energy, and public spirit, and its brave and 
true women. And has not this city these? 
Surely, if in the late catastrophe all that is 
noble, benevolent, and self-effacing did not 
appear in every movement of our people, 
then no such qualities exist anywhere. The 
manner in which they rose to meet the emer- 
gency argues well for the city's future. Be- 
fore the calamity was fairly upon them they 
sprang to grapple it and ward it off so far 
as possible. It was owing to them and to the 
military that the city was saved from starva- 
tion, anarchy, and disease. It also speaks 
well for men so severely stricken to be the 
first to send aid to a similarly stricken city, 
the metropolis of Pacific South America. 

All this leads us to the highest hopes 
for the future. What we need most of all 
is a centralization of mechanical industries 
59 



RESURGAM 

around the shores of this bay. Let every- 
thing that is made he made here, and the re- 
quirements of all the peoples facing this ocean 
here he met. The Panama canal will he a 
blessing or a curse to California in propor- 
tion as she rises to the occasion and makes 
opportunities. Manufactures and commerce 
tell the whole story. Let us have the city 
beautiful by all means — it will pay; Paris 
makes it pay; but we must have the useful 
in any event — this, and a municipality with 
its several parts subordinated to a general 
scheme. What we can do without is dema- 
gogism, with its attendant labor wrangles, 
and all the fraud, lying, and hypocrisy inci- 
dent to a too free government. We want a 
city superior to any other in beauty, as well 
as in utility, and it will pay these United 
States well to see that we have it. If we 
build no better than before, we gain nothing 
by this fire which has cost many a heartache. 
The game of the gods is in our hands; 
60 



RESURGAM 

shall we play it worthily? Two decades of 
inaction at this juncture, like those which 
followed the advent of the overland railway, 
would decide the fate of the city adversely 
for the century, and the effect of it would 
last for ten centuries. When the shores of 
the Pacific are occupied as the shores of the 
Atlantic now are, when all around the vast 
arena formed by America, Asia, and Aus- 
tralia are great nations of wealth and cul- 
ture, with hundreds of Bostons and Balti- 
mores, of Londons and Liverpools, the great 
American republic would scarcely be satis- 
fied with only a porter's lodge at her western 
gateway. 

It is not much to say that the new city 
will be modern and up to date, with some 
widened streets and winding boulevards, gar- 
dens hanging to the hillside, parks with lakes 
and cascades, reservoirs of sea water on 
every hilltop ; public work and public service, 
street cars telephones and lighting being of 
61 



RESURGAM 

the best. Plans for such changes were pre- 
pared before the fire; they can be extended 
and carried out with greater facility since the 
ground has been cleared from obstructions. 
All this and more may easily be done if the 
government can be made to see where the 
true interests of the people lie, to regard a 
west-coast metropolis with an eye for some- 
thing of beauty as well as of utility, an eye 
which can see utility in beauty, and withal 
an eye of pride in possession. A paltry two 
or three hundred millions judiciously ex- 
pended here by the government would make 
a city which would ever remain the pride of 
the whole people and command the admira- 
tion and respect of all the nations around 
this great ocean. 

Of what avail are art and architecture if 
they may not be employed in a cause like 
this ? Here is an opportunity which the 
world has never before witnessed. With lim- 
itless wealth, with genius of as high an order 
62 



RE SURG AM 

as any that has gone before, with the stored 
experiences of all ages and nations — what bet- 
ter use can be made of it all than to establish 
at the nation's western gate a city which shall 
be the initial point of a new order of develop- 
ment ? Away back in the days of Palmyra 
and Thebes the rulers of those cities seemed 
to understand it, if the people did not — that 
is to say, the value of embellishment. And 
had we now but one American Nebuchad- 
nezzar we might have a Babylon at our 
Pacific seaport. For a six-months' world's 
fair any considerable city can get from the 
government five or ten millions. And why 
not? There's politics in it. Can we not 
have some of " those politics " for a respect- 
able west-coast city? Would it not be econ- 
omy to spend some millions on an industrial 
metropolis which should be a permanent 
world's fair for the enlightenment of the 
Pacific ? The nation has made its capital 
beautiful, and so established the doctrine 
63 



RESURGAM 



that art, architecture, and beautiful environ- 
ment have a value above ugly utility. May 
we not hope for something a little out of the 
common for the nation's chief seaport on the 
Pacific, a little fresh gilding for our Golden 
Gate? 



THE END 



64 



. 



IAN 26 1907 



